Gaming & Culture —

The Showdown: does the Xbox 360 need Blu-ray?

The Showdown returns as Ben and Frank debate the question of whether or not …

The Showdown returns. In the Showdown, we pick a topic, flip a coin to see which side each OT writer gets to argue, then present it to you. Today we discuss whether or not the Xbox 360 needs a Blu-ray drive.

Ben: So HD DVD is dead, Blu-ray has won, and now the will-they-won't-they back and forth from both Sony and Microsoft is getting crazy. I keep seeing people saying that the 360 now needs a Blu-ray add-on, and I just don't understand it. The HD DVD add-on drive never took off in huge numbers, Microsoft wants to push its digital download services more than they'd want to license the technology from Sony, and I just don't see a huge market for a Blu-ray player on the platform.

Unless the technology comes built into a later model 360, I don't see the price being low enough to justify getting an add-on drive instead of a stand-alone Blu-ray player or a PS3, and I simply don't see why it makes economic sense for Microsoft. Microsoft will do everything it can to get the best games on its platform while trying to entice you to buy downloads of their content. That's where the money is for Microsoft, and that's where the company's focus seems to be. I think the HD DVD drive will be chalked up as an experiment that ended badly, lesson learned.

Frank: Though the company would never come directly out and say it, Microsoft doesn't want you to have a PlayStation 3 in your house; the Xbox 360 is supposed to be the center of your living room, with all display outputs and computers supporting it as the perfect set-top box. Now that the format war is over, the Xbox 360 has one fundamental deficiency: it no longer plays the latest high-definition, disc-based movies. The HD DVD player may still be functional, but unless you plan on watching Harry Potter again and again for the next fifteen years, chances are that you're probably going to want a capable player if you're already in the market for high-def video.

Ben: There are many assumptions in your argument: that people who play games are looking for a high-definition format for their media, that Sony isn't simply splintering the market between people who play games and people who watch movies instead of bringing them together. The Wii is proving that the mass market just wants to play games, and while an add-on player would give people the option of buying or not, it also costs a good amount of money to produce, distribute, and support... and the disc sales would be giving Sony money, while Microsoft would only have the nebulous advantage of taking one bullet point away from the PS3.

I understand what you're saying—and on some level it makes sense—but I think Microsoft has more to lose by diluting its message with an add-on player than it has to gain by releasing one. I think there is going to be a ton of speculation in the coming months about a player coming, but I'd be surprised if it ever actually happened.

Frank: Ah, but with the Wii you generally have two types of Wii owners: those who would never consider spending great amounts of money on home entertainment and find the novelty of the Wii and, more importantly, the price sufficient, and those that own more than one console—by Microsoft's own admission, no less. When you're talking about high-definition media, you have to basically accept that fact that you're already talking about a smaller subset of the mass console-owning population.

All I'm saying is that where Microsoft once had a foothold in the high-definition video domain, they now have none. As a result, those high-definition video patrons are going to shift to the surviving format, Blu-ray. And when they go out to find a Blu-ray player, chances are that they're going to look at the PlayStation 3—which is one of the few that supports BD-Live to its fullest and is arguably the most future-proof player around—and see that in addition to the player they're also getting a functional console. Believe it or not, Sony's plan actually worked. Microsoft's decision not to combat that would be nothing more than a showcase of stubborn pride.

Let's hear your thoughts: does the Xbox 360 need a Blu-ray drive? Is one coming?